Question Need a little help with a newbie user and new setup

my goal: 

Much like i can setup a folder on my box and use visual code studio and do a go live to view my designs I hope to install and setup webtrees on my local mac to do development and such before i put out on the internet.  

I can't seem to find anything easy to follow - I have downloaded the latest version but decided to post here for everyone to get a laugh at my ignorance and maybe get a smidge of help

Susan
Devon Farm 
(ps I plan to use for my animals not humans) 

Thank you 

Hi Susan, to set up a local webtrees you'll need a server and database. I use XAMPP for my Windows local setup.
There is an XAMPP for Mac.  www.apachefriends.org/download.html
There's a bit of a learning curve setting that up but not too steep.
For a full development version of webtrees there is the GitHub source code github.com/fisharebest/webtrees
Other wiser souls on this forum would be able to advise you on the ins and outs of that.
I hope that is of help to you.

For a local development environment you can try XAMPP which worked great for me on Windows, but last time I tried it on MacOs I could not get it working due to a conflict with something (likely MAMP which I tried and felt was not usable)

Here's a longer list of alternatives:
stackoverflow.com/questions/44545077/bes...-environment-for-mac

You could also try running everything in Docker (or colima) for instance based on hub.docker.com/r/nathanvaughn/webtrees with a volume mounted to local source code. It's still on my ToDo list to look into this.

NB: if all you want to do is adjust some styling or test an external module, then this all should work and you can take the regular distribution of webtrees.
For more "core" development you'll need some extra tooling to build some things from source code.

did you follow  webtrees.net/install/ ? 
Where are you stuck?

the link you sent I did not see anything clear to guide me with setting up on my mac. So I guess I am stuck on the beginning I downloaded the files extracted to a folder but that’s as far as I am.

Thank you

Thanks I will look at some of this information and see if I can figure something out. Fingers crossed.

so next is

• Upload the contents of the webtrees folder to a folder on your web server.

meaning: move the unpacked to a folder you can access with a browser by http : / / localhost...... 

@Franz, I think DevonFarm does not yet have a server with PHP and a database running locally on the Mac.

@DevonFarm - if you are a "non-techie", then MAMP is a good option to use on a Mac.

Install the app, and then copy the webtrees files into the MAMP's home folder. The MAMP documentation should tell you what settings you need for the webtrees setup page.